Layout

To say that this layout was an undertaking is an understatement. I didn't even start building the layout until I completed the content; it's not the usual way I do things, but for this site I had no choice — I didn't even know what my main sections were going to be until I was nearly finished writing! I knew I needed a layout that was simple enough to allow the visitor to easily read very long pages of content and also easily navigate from section to section across the site. Simple enough, but actually carrying that out was harder than I thought!

The amazing people over at Amassment came to my aid, for which I'm very, very grateful. dubiousdisc helped me brainstorm and figure out the basic structure of the site, as well as gave me a few suggestions for how to set up individual pages. Robin also suggested a couple things with regard to setup. I had decided to use Bootstrap to make the site responsive, and when I ran into a pile of coding trouble, Nyx was kind enough to untangle my code. Masao also answered some of my coding questions when I got stuck with the header.

In short, this layout came together with help from a lot of people, and I'm incredibly thankful for all of their help. I couldn't have done it without them.

The palette of this site is very brown, which is, well, the palette of FFXII. I mean, there are some colorful areas throughout the game, but when you think of FFXII chances are you're going to think brown. It's the dominant color of the game. I wanted to evoke the game's UI in the design, so I used paper textures from Lost and Taken and the little icon from the game when you open a map urn or get a key item. I also used the transparent logo by eldi13 in a couple of places.

As a side note, if you're visiting the site on a mobile device, most of the images are hidden to 1) make the pages easier to read and 2) reduce loading time. I did my best to make everything look good for mobile, but this site is absolutely optimized for desktops.

Credits

The game script at FFWA was of great help to me for the cast section, as was the FFXII Scenario Ultimania. Most information in the gameplay section was referenced from the FF Wiki, with help from this IZJS guide. The galleries are powered by fancyBox. Everything else is credited on the pages used or my own work.

Also, this site would not have been built without Scrivener. I wrote all 45,000+ words of content before building the layout, and it allowed me to keep everything neatly organized in one place. I could not have kept track of everything without it. Greatest program ever.